End of tenancy cleaning in and around Islington Square

‘Two years on a corporate let in the courtyard block above the Curzon, my employer’s relocation team had set the move-out for a Friday morning and Hamptons wanted the snagging photographs uploaded before the inbound tenant landed on the Sunday’ — Aditi, ex-tenant, Islington Square N1 0, March 2026. Monster Cleaning has worked hand-back cleans at Islington Square since the first residential phase opened in 2019, on the courtyard flats above the Curzon screens, on the Tolpuddle Street gable, on the Liverpool Road frontage, and on the Esther Anne Place corner block. The buildings are post-2018 luxury new-build throughout: oak engineered floors, brushed-bronze ironmongery, integrated appliances, MVHR ventilation, glass balustrades to the inner courtyard balconies. Studio from £156. One-bed from £207. Two-bed from £243. Three-bed from £339.

Last updated April 2026. We cover every block on the development — the courtyard frontage above the cinema and retail at ground floor, the Tolpuddle Street gable above the gym, the Liverpool Road faade, the Esther Anne Place block, and the upper penthouses at roof level. For borough-wide pricing and policy detail see our Islington end of tenancy hub.

‘Two years in a one-bed corporate let on the third floor of the courtyard block, the Esther Anne Place side, taken through Knight Frank on a relocation package from a fintech employer that brought me over from Mumbai in early 2024. The flat had Siemens integrated appliances, a Miele induction hob, oak engineered floor through the open-plan, and a small Juliet balcony with a glass balustrade overlooking the courtyard. By the end of the second year the silica builders’ dust had migrated out of the MVHR diffuser grilles every couple of months and there was a band of grey particulate sitting on the bezel ring of every recessed downlight in the kitchen-living. The rainfall shower head in the bathroom had limescale built up at the rinser edge and the porcelain grout line under it was greying. Monster came on a Tuesday morning, three cleaners, eight hours billed flat at £195. They pulled the diffuser grilles out, took them outside on the balcony for a soft brush and a damp wipe, then refitted them. They cleaned each downlight bezel by hand on a microfibre with a soft brush. The rainfall shower head was descaled with a dilute weak-acid bath, dwell time, then re-rinsed and polished. The Hamptons clerk walked it on the Thursday and uploaded the snagging report to the building portal the same evening. I had the full £3,400 deposit back through TDS custodial inside the next eight working days. The flat went straight to the inbound corporate tenant on the Sunday.’ — Aditi, Islington Square N1 0, March 2026

Why Islington Square deposits get clipped

Islington Square is the Sager Group and Cain International redevelopment of the former Royal Mail Mount Pleasant sorting office on the Upper Street and Liverpool Road side of the borough, between Islington Town Centre and Highbury Corner. The masterplan, by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, opened in phases between 2018 and 2020 and integrated retail and leisure at ground floor (Curzon Cinema, Third Space gym, several restaurants) with luxury private-rental flats above. The development takes its name from the new public square at its centre. Streets ringing the site: Esther Anne Place to the south, Tolpuddle Street to the west, Liverpool Road to the north-west, the upper portion of Berners Road to the east. Postcode N1 0 throughout the residential blocks; the retail frontage uses N1 0PS for most marketing addresses.

The borough rent picture for Islington as a whole sits at a London premium. Islington private rents averaged £2,763 a month in March 2026, up 2.4% on March 2025, against a London-wide annual rise of 1.7% (ONS Private Rent and House Prices, March 2026). Islington Square sits well above that figure because the build standard, the concierge service, the residents’ pool and gym, and the integrated leisure at ground floor all push monthly rents on a one-bed past the £3,200 mark and a two-bed past £4,500. Bigger deposit, sharper hand-back walk, more to lose if the snagging report flags anything.

Then there is the building stock itself. Every block on the development is post-2018 finish: oak engineered flooring through the open-plan living-kitchen, brushed-bronze ironmongery on the doors and cabinet pulls, integrated Siemens or Miele appliances behind matching cabinet fronts, MVHR mechanical ventilation with heat recovery feeding ceiling diffuser grilles in every habitable room, recessed LED downlights with brushed-bronze bezels, glass balustrades to the inner-courtyard Juliet balconies, large-format porcelain tiling in the bathrooms with rainfall shower heads and underfloor heating throughout. None of it has picture rails, cornice, ceiling roses, original timber sashes, or the standard period-conversion test items. The clerks who walk Islington Square have a different snagging vocabulary because the build is different.

Renters’ Rights Act 2025 — what changed on 1 May 2026

Section 21 no-fault evictions were abolished a week ago. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025 and Phase 1 commenced on 1 May 2026: rolling periodic tenancies replace fixed-term ASTs, Section 21 is gone, and any Section 21 notice served on or before 30 April 2026 has to be acted on with a possession claim by 31 July 2026 or it is deemed invalid. The change matters more at Islington Square than at most period-stock addresses because a high share of the lets here are corporate relocation contracts running 12 to 24 months on rolling renewal. From a tenant’s point of view this means the deposit-return route is the cleanest way out: a clean move-out, a documented inspection, deposit back, you fly. From a landlord’s point of view the inventory carries more weight than ever, because possession routes are now narrower and the deposit dispute is the main lever left. Tenants in dispute should review options with the relevant scheme: Tenancy Deposit Scheme, mydeposits, or the Deposit Protection Service. Shelter has a plain-English summary of the changes for tenants on the Renters’ Rights Act tenant guide.

Clerks walk N1 stricter now.

Islington Council’s licensing regime around the development

Islington Square sits in Bunhill ward, which is not currently inside the borough’s selective licensing footprint covering Hillrise, Finsbury Park and Tollington. What does cover the development is the borough-wide additional licensing scheme for shared houses or flats let to three or four unrelated occupiers. The scheme ran from 1 February 2021 and was redesignated for a further five years from 1 February 2026 to 31 January 2031 after the council’s 2025 consultation. Most flats on the development are single-household corporate or private lets that fall outside the additional-licensing trigger, but a handful of three-bed flats sublet to three professionals on separate AST clauses do meet the threshold and are licensed accordingly.

Practical effect on cleaning: the licence-holder of a three-share three-bed flat at the development has standing to deduct for shared-area condition (the open-plan kitchen-living, the shared bathroom on the lower-bedroom side, the principal en-suite if treated as common) that would not be picked up on a single-household let. We price these as standard rooms; you are not paying double.

The Mount Pleasant heritage and the integrated leisure design

The site was the Royal Mail’s Mount Pleasant sorting office for the Islington side, decommissioned in stages from 2010 onward, and the redevelopment retained almost none of the original sorting-office fabric. What it kept instead was the long urban-grain footprint — a single deep block running roughly 200 metres from Liverpool Road to Berners Road, threaded by a publicly accessible courtyard route — and the planning brief committed the ground-floor frontage to retail and leisure tenants. The Curzon screens occupy a deep basement level under the courtyard. The Third Space gym takes the Tolpuddle Street ground floor. Several restaurants and bars line Esther Anne Place and the Liverpool Road return. From a hand-back cleaning point of view this matters in two ways. First, the residential blocks above all share the gym’s pool plant room one level down, and the warm humid air rising through the building service shafts means the MVHR diffusers in the lower-floor bathrooms collect more moisture-borne dust than a typical new-build of the same age. Second, the trolley-access window at the concierge desk on the courtyard side runs from 9am to 9.30am only, so we book hand-back cleans for an 8am start and pre-arrange the trolley pass with the building manager the working day before.

Coverage area

We work the whole development and the immediately adjoining streets. Streets and zones we book most often:

• The Islington Square courtyard blocks themselves — the residential floors above the Curzon and the retail frontage
• The Tolpuddle Street gable above the Third Space gym entrance
• The Liverpool Road frontage block, ground-floor restaurants below, residential above
• The Esther Anne Place corner block, with the upper-floor flats overlooking the courtyard
• The penthouses at roof-level on each block
• Berners Road return, the eastern edge of the development
• Adjoining streets the same teams cover on the same day — Theberton Street, Cloudesley Road, Studd Street, Linton Street
• The Liverpool Road run north toward the Town Hall and south toward Angel
• N1 0 throughout the development; jobs sometimes bleed into N1 7 on the western edge and N1 9 to the south

If your address is the development itself, ring the office and we will brief the team on the courtyard trolley window and the concierge sign-in.

What’s included on every Islington Square clean

End of tenancy is the hand-back clean. Deep is for staying. Regular is for keeping it tidy. The work below is the first one — everything priced as a fixed quote, agent-facing report on request, the 57-point agent-approved checklist applied throughout, three cleaners on a typical two-bed, the indoor folding tower for the high open-plan ceilings if needed.

Open-plan living-kitchen

This is the room the clerks walk first because it is the room every prospective inbound corporate tenant photographs first. Inside, outside and behind the integrated Siemens or Miele oven, including the inner door glass and the gasket line at the cabinet front. Induction hob descaled and polished without abrasive. Hood baffle filter pulled, soaked, dried and replaced; many of the flats here have ducted-out rather than recirculating hoods, so the duct entry collar gets a soft brush. Inside, outside, top and underneath every cabinet, including the brushed-bronze pulls. Inside the integrated fridge, freezer and dishwasher, with the seals individually scrubbed, the dishwasher filter pulled and the salt reservoir checked. Worktops degreased, the quartz or composite stone polished without anything that would mark the finish. Sink and tap descaled. Oak engineered flooring damp-mopped along the grain, never wet. Recessed downlight bezels hand-cleaned with a microfibre and soft brush; this is the test item the clerks notice on the open-plan ceiling and the most-missed surface in the flat. MVHR ceiling diffuser grilles unclipped, taken outside, soft-brushed and damp-wiped, then refitted with the original orientation marker. The Juliet-balcony glass balustrade interior face is hand-polished, microfingerprints lifted with a streak-free finish.

Bathrooms and en-suites

Large-format porcelain tile, rainfall shower head, glass shower screen, brushed-bronze taps, underfloor heating, MVHR extract grille. Rainfall shower head descaled by dilute weak-acid bath, dwell time, re-rinsed and polished. Glass shower screen and door descaled and polished both faces. Porcelain grout line at the rinser-head edge brushed clean of limescale residue (Thames Water mains in N1 averages around 293 ppm calcium carbonate — you can confirm the local figure on the Thames Water hardness page). Bath, basin, brushed-bronze tap, drain and overflow done. WC bowl, rim, hinge, base. Mirror, shaver socket, recessed-light bezel, MVHR extract grille all hand-cleaned and dust-free. Underfloor-heating manifold cabinet door wiped if accessible. Porcelain floor mopped, edges done by hand.

Bedrooms

The principal bedroom on most flats here has a fitted wardrobe wall in oak veneer, brushed-bronze pulls, a small dressing area and an en-suite return. Inside every wardrobe and drawer; runners wiped; the panel back of the wardrobe at floor level is checked for builders’ silica residue that migrates from the MVHR system. Window sills, jambs, and the inside face of the floor-to-ceiling glazing are hand-wiped. Recessed downlight bezels and MVHR diffuser grilles done as in the kitchen-living. Oak engineered flooring damp-mopped. Bedroom radiators behind the fins where original. Skirting line throughout. Door tops and door frames done by hand. Carpets, where retained on bedroom returns rather than oak floor (most flats here are oak throughout, but a small number of one-beds have carpet in the bedroom), are vacuumed in two directions and edge-cleaned by hand.

Throughout

Hallway, internal doors both faces, brushed-bronze door furniture, threshold strips, smoke alarm dust-pass without removal. Communal door from the flat to the lift lobby is wiped on the flat side only. The intercom panel and key fob holder are wiped. Skirting throughout. Storage cupboard interiors. Final walk-through with daylight photography of every room handed to the tenant for the digital snagging-report upload to the building portal. Photographs are taken in daylight only because the clerks operate under the same rule.

What it costs at Islington Square

Pricing on the development sits at the standard N1 base because, despite the premium build, the actual square-footage on a one-bed (around 50 to 55 square metres) is no larger than a period one-bed in the borough, and the absence of period detail (no picture rails, no cornice, no ten-foot parlour ceilings, no original timber sashes) means the work is more procedural and less hand-finishing than a Halton Road upper split. We do not load a premium for the postcode where the actual hours billed are unchanged. The numbers below are the standard hand-back fee for an empty flat:

Add-ons. Carpet shampoo £36 a bedroom, £43 the living room (rare on the development since most flats are oak engineered throughout), £115 for a whole-flat pass on a typical two-bed if the bedrooms are carpeted. Single oven add-on £77, double £110, range cooker 90cm £114 (some of the larger Esther Anne Place penthouses have full range setups). Hourly cleaner rate is £30 per cleaner if the job is bespoke and falls outside the fixed-price brackets. Quotes hold for fourteen days. The National Living Wage moves to £12.71 from April 2026 (gov.uk minimum wage rates), which is the floor we work above on every job.

What your Islington Square letting agent will actually check

This list is built from feedback we have collected from Hamptons (314 Upper Street), Knight Frank (132 Upper Street), Foxtons Angel (355 Upper Street), Galliard’s residential desk and the in-house lettings management on the building. Order matters — top of the list is what gets failed most often.

1. Recessed downlight bezels in the open-plan kitchen-living — the silica-particulate band that sits on every brushed-bronze ring, daylight-visible at certain angles
2. MVHR ceiling diffuser grilles in every habitable room — the dust load when the grille is unclipped is what the clerks photograph
3. Glass balustrade to the Juliet balcony — the inner face for fingerprint marks and the upper edge for dust
4. Integrated appliance gasket line at the cabinet front — the seam between the Siemens or Miele appliance and the matching cabinet door
5. Rainfall shower head limescale at the rinser edge and the porcelain grout line directly beneath
6. Glass shower screen and door — both faces, descale and polish
7. Brushed-bronze tap base — the join between fitting and porcelain or stone
8. Oak engineered floor at the kitchen-living junction where the joint runs — particulate sits in the seasonal expansion gap
9. Open-plan ceiling at the highest point — some duplex flats have double-height returns
10. Fitted wardrobe back panel at floor level — the silica-residue test item, MVHR-driven
11. Brushed-bronze ironmongery on every internal door — finger-marks under the lever
12. Fridge and freezer integrated-door seals — the rubber bloom test
13. Dishwasher filter and salt reservoir — the most-missed item in any new-build kitchen
14. Hood baffle filter and the duct entry collar — many flats are ducted-out
15. Quartz or composite-stone worktop edge — the underside of the lip where the silicone line catches
16. Underfloor-heating manifold cabinet inside the bathroom — access door wiped, dust-free
17. Floor-to-ceiling glazing inside face — streak-free, no microfibre lint
18. Smoke alarm and heat detector dust-pass without removal
19. Intercom panel, key fob holder, video door entry screen — all wiped
20. Concierge-side flat door inner face — threshold strip and the small lift-lobby return

How booking works

1. Phone 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected]. Tell us the building (courtyard block, Tolpuddle, Liverpool Road, Esther Anne Place), the floor, the bedroom count and your move-out date.
2. We confirm a fixed quote on the call. Carpet add-on, oven type, MVHR diffuser pass (always included), the concierge trolley window and the snagging-report photo file all get talked through.
3. We email a written confirmation with the start time, the team lead’s name and the trolley pass details we have pre-arranged with the building manager.
4. The team arrives at 8am for the 9am to 9.30am concierge trolley window. Three cleaners on a two-bed, two on a one-bed, one on a studio with a second floater on call. They work to the 57-point agent-approved checklist. Daylight photographs are taken on completion for the snagging-report upload.
5. The inventory clerk attends within 48 hours. If they flag any cleaning issue we come back free under the 48-hour re-clean guarantee. If they flag something outside the cleaning scope (a chip in the brushed-bronze pull from a previous tenancy, a snagging item from the developer warranty period that is the building’s responsibility), that is a separate inventory dispute and we will back you up with our daylight photo file.

Related services and neighbouring areas

If you are booking the end of tenancy clean, you may want one or more of these add-ons. Same teams across the same patch:

• Standalone oven cleaning — for landlords running rolling corporate lets where the kitchen needs an inter-tenancy reset
• Carpet shampoo and stain treatment — for the small number of flats with bedroom-only carpet returns
• Window cleaning — the inside face of the floor-to-ceiling glazing on the upper-floor flats overlooking the courtyard, where reach is the issue
• Upholstery cleaning — particularly worth doing on landlord-supplied furniture in furnished corporate lets
• Hard floor restoration — the oak engineered flooring throughout the development, where a damp-not-wet pass with the right product matters
• After-builders cleaning — for the snagging period after a developer-side remediation visit on a flat still inside warranty

Neighbouring areas we cover for end of tenancy:

• Islington Green end of tenancy — the Camden Passage above-shop conversions just east of the development
• Essex Road end of tenancy — the late-Victorian upper-split flats between Islington Green and Newington Green
• Highbury Fields end of tenancy — the N5 conservation area to the north
• The full Islington end of tenancy hub with every neighbourhood we cover

To date we have helped recover £1.2m deposits across our London and county books, working with 300+ letting agents on rolling rotas.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does end of tenancy cleaning cost at Islington Square?

For a standard empty flat: studio £156, one-bed £207, two-bed £243, three-bed £339, four-bed penthouse £425. The development sits at our standard N1 base because the absence of period detail (no picture rails, no cornice, no ten-foot parlour ceilings, no original sashes) keeps the hours-billed lower than a Halton Road upper split of the same bedroom count. Carpet and oven add-ons are priced separately.

Do you handle the concierge trolley window on the courtyard side?

Yes. The trolley pass runs 9am to 9.30am most working days. We pre-arrange it with the building manager the working day before, arrive at 8am to set up, and clear the trolley window before the morning courier slot. If your move-out falls on a weekend or holiday the trolley window shifts and we work around it.

Which letting agents do you work with on the development?

Hamptons at 314 Upper Street, Knight Frank at 132 Upper Street, Foxtons Angel at 355 Upper Street, Galliard’s residential desk and the in-house building lettings management. Our 57-point agent-approved checklist covers what their inventory clerks walk against on the development.

Do you clean the MVHR diffuser grilles?

Yes, on every habitable room. We unclip each grille, take it outside on the balcony if there is one, soft-brush the louvre and damp-wipe the rim, then refit with the original orientation marker. This is one of the test items the clerks photograph on hand-back, and a generic cleaner will not touch it.

What about the recessed downlight bezels?

Hand-cleaned with a microfibre and a soft brush, every bezel ring in every room. The brushed-bronze finish on the bezels collects a daylight-visible particulate band that the clerks notice immediately on the open-plan kitchen-living ceiling.

Is the water hard at Islington Square?

Yes. The Thames Water mains supply to N1 runs at roughly 280 to 300 mg/l calcium carbonate, very hard end of the scale. You can confirm the figure for your postcode on the Thames Water hardness page. The rainfall shower heads, brushed-bronze taps and porcelain grout lines all need a dilute weak-acid descale with proper dwell time, then a re-rinse and polish.

What happens if the snagging clerk flags something?

Phone or email us within 48 hours of the original clean. We come back, redo the flagged items, and stand the cost. We have held that 48-hour re-clean guarantee since 2014 and our 97% first-time pass rate is reflected on Trustpilot.

How early can you start?

From 8am at the development to clear the 9am to 9.30am concierge trolley window. The latest start we will take is 1pm because the snagging-report photographs need to be taken in daylight, in line with the building’s own marketing photography rule.

Do you bring your own cleaning materials?

Yes. Every cleaner arrives with descalers, degreasers, soft brushes for the brushed-bronze ironmongery, the right cloth for floor-to-ceiling glazing, the right product for oak engineered flooring (damp not wet), the soft brush for the MVHR diffuser louvres and a folding indoor tower for the duplex double-height ceilings. You do not need to leave consumables.

Will you clean the inside face of the floor-to-ceiling glazing?

Yes, every accessible interior pane and the frame. We do not do exteriors above ground floor without proper access; the building’s own facade-cleaning contractor handles the outer face on a quarterly cycle.

Can you clean a flat that is still partly furnished?

Yes, with a small adjustment. We work around landlord-owned furniture without moving heavy items off the oak floor. If you have left bagged items for collection we will work around them, but we cannot dispose of them — Islington Council bulky-waste collection has to be booked separately.

What if the previous tenant left things dirty beyond the standard?

We will quote on attend if it is clearly outside the original scope. Mould patches in the en-suite, smoke residue from heavy smoking (rare on the development; the leases prohibit it), pet damage on the engineered floor, abandoned items in the wardrobes. We will show you the difference between fair-wear-and-tear and tenant-caused damage so the deduction conversation with your landlord starts in the right place.

Can I claim my deposit back if you have cleaned the flat?

Your right to challenge a deduction sits with the deposit scheme: TDS, DPS or MyDeposits. The daylight photograph file we leave you with is the evidence pack you upload to the dispute. We have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits since 2014.

Are you insured?

Public liability cover up to £5m, employer’s liability £10m, and Monster Cleaning Ltd is registered at Companies House as 9919639. Trading since 2014 from 255 Upper Richmond Road West, SW14 8QS.

Do you do the snagging photo file for the building portal upload?

Yes. We photograph every room in daylight, room-by-room, plus the test items the building clerks zoom on (downlight bezels, MVHR grilles, glass balustrade, integrated-appliance gasket lines, rainfall shower head, oak floor expansion gap). The file is sent to your email before we leave the postcode and you upload it to the building portal at your end.

Can you do same-day for an emergency?

Sometimes. If you ring before 10am we can usually slot a small flat into the same day. Islington Square is easier to attend at short notice because we have crew already in N1 most working days and the trolley window can be re-arranged with the building manager on a few hours’ notice.

Ready to book

Phone 0333 555 2076, email [email protected], or use the booking form. We confirm slots within two hours during working hours and the quote will hold for fourteen days. The 48-hour re-clean guarantee covers everything we do from the moment we leave the postcode. Monster Cleaning Ltd, Companies House 9919639, trading since 2014 from 255 Upper Richmond Road West, SW14 8QS. Trustpilot 3.1 over 128 reviews.